


Recovery

by Interrobam



Category: Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Child Abuse, Community: disney_kink, Denial, F/M, Group Therapy, Kidnapping, Rape/Non-con References, Therapy, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-17
Updated: 2012-08-17
Packaged: 2017-11-12 08:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything was said and done Gothel thought bitterly that only she would be so unlucky as to sleep with the one person in her therapy group who was also a convicted sex offender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Severe child abuse, some abelist language, racism, background rape. Told from the perspective of an unrepentant abuser, so lots and lots of victim blaming.
> 
> Written for the Disney Animated Kink Meme.

After everything was said and done Gothel thought bitterly that only she would be so unlucky as to fuck the one person in her therapy group who turned out to be a sex offender. Hades would find it hilarious, she suspected: the two baby snatchers making a baby. Lady Tremaine would look down her nose all the deeper at her: an unmarried woman, a scarlet woman, and with a former priest no less. Assholes, all of them. She hadn't planned on telling the group about it, in any case, and certainly not her caseworker.

“Dr. Merryweather reports that you've been attending your meetings regularly.”

“Yes.” Her eyes were trained firmly on the pen Mr. Bubbles held in his hands, the file he was scribbling in. She wanted to get out of there, out of the angular government building that stood like a tombstone by the sidewalk. She wanted to have a cigarette, or even better a nice stiff drink.

“She also tells me you're still determined to regain custody.” Gothel shrugged her shoulders, turned her attention to the window, the telephone wires surrounding the tombstone.

“What do you expect from a mother?”

After their meeting came to an end she asked for the paperwork that would get her out of that damned group, away from that slimy priest and the hickeys he left on her neck. Mr. Bubbles politely, decisively, refused to give it to her. She spat on his carpet on her way out.

She took the subway back to the halfway house where she had taken Frollo on that drunken, foolish night. She made ramen for her dinner and ate it over the sink, inspecting the bags under her eyes with the help of her faucet. She made ramen again the next night, this time chicken instead of pork, but the night after that was for therapy, so she knew there would be coffee and donuts in the church basement. When she arrived she was careful to take all of the plain glazed and avoid the jelly filled ones. She hated how they burst in her mouth, like cockroaches spilling their guts. She put eleven creamers in her coffee and settled into her cheap folding chair as Dr. Merryweather took attendance. 

She made Gothel recite her story again: she made them recite their stories every time. Hers wasn't much to tell. One Saturday she bought a pair of scrubs from the Salvation Army, and that Monday she walked into the local hospital wearing them. She asked for the baby and they handed her over. Honestly. Eight and a half pounds of your own flesh and blood, a nine month investment, and you give it to a woman who couldn't even be bothered to make a fake nametag? Idiots of that magnitude, Gothel wondered why it was even conceivable that she would be held to blame for the fact that they practically threw their little girl at the first person willing to take her.

In any case she had been a much better mother, had kept her much safer. Rapunzel wasn't even allowed to leave the apartment, what with all the kidnappers, murderers, and rapists (who she kept accidentally fucking, if Frollo was any good as a representative sample) prowling. She had clothed her, fed her, given her her bottle and blanket when she cried. She had done so much more than the girl's own parents had, abandoning their baby like that. She had put her sweat, tears, and blood into that child. One day the police came, took her daughter out of her room, and called her “malnourished” and “severely disabled”. The girl was just stupid, an idiot like her parents had been, a brat who sat in her own filth and refused to learn how to talk. Gothel had done the best she could. “Environmental autism” they called it. Rapunzel didn't know how to chew solid food, to hold a doll, they testified in court. Her hair was matted with filth, she was an eighteen year old the size and shape of a twelve tear old. 

Gothel had stood by with utmost dignity, utmost grace as they slandered her, showed the pictures they had taken of her apartment before she had the chance to tidy up. She had kept her composure as they handed her her sentence, ordered her to participate in therapy. She kept her composure even then, as she was giving her speech to the circle of chairs, as her peers looked down at her with hypocritical glints in their eyes. Gothel was, above all, a woman of bearing.

Frollo told his tale next, he had taken the chair beside her to spite her, to make the memories of red spots on her neck and soreness in her knees inflame themselves. He had taken his baby from a dying, homeless woman as she gave her last confession. It was never, technically, legal, but he liked to emphasize that it was never, technically, kidnapping either. He said he treated the boy fine, allowed him to earn his keep sweeping the floors and maintaining the bells in the church. It was only when the “lying harlot”, a name he was still allowed to call her because she had lost her trial (she had worn a shirt that showed her stomach, she had been too afraid to scream, the jury deemed her undeserving of justice), caught the attention of the police that they began sniffing around. It was only after the trail that they found the boy living in the back room, and the priest was ordered to do his time with the rest of them. 

It was on that particular tour, Gothel silently added to his narrative, that they had each decided to go to a bar after their session, only to find that they frequented the same establishment. He had graduated from the program a week after they spent their night in the halfway house, they hadn't spoken a word about it. He was attempting to regain his ordainment when another girl came forth. This one he couldn't call a lying harlot: she was white, she was a virgin. The jury believed her, the judge put him in the database Gothel had found three nights ago. He had to return.

They got about as far as they normally did: Gothel talked about petitioning for custody a third time, Frollo ranted about teasing women. Hades learned a bit more about faking contrition, Lady Tremaine complained about the daughters she still had under her thumb. Maleficent griped about her goddaughter running away with some man she barely knew, White was sympathetic. Dr. Merryweather pressed very gently for progress, her patients bucked her from their backs like raging bulls. After their two painful hours were spent Gothel went out to the alley behind the church, lit up a cigarette, and enjoyed the momentary peace before she had to return to the subway, to her room.

And of course, of _course_ the goddamned priest she had fucked back when he wasn't technically a rapist, back when she didn't know better and thought everything might work out if the kid was her blood this time, came out from the door behind her. Of course he didn't just walk into the street, just ignore her, but instead stood there staring like a deer in her highbeams.

“Hey.” She muttered. She remembered the first time they met: the instant hatred they had shared. Her an unmarried mother, the epitome of the manipulative harpy he saw in every woman on the street, a tricky minx with features that were decidedly not Caucasian. Him a stogy rich man, with a gaze so close to that of the predator she could never convict (like the “lying harpy” she had worn a shirt that showed her stomach, she hadn't fought hard enough, she didn't need to hire a lawyer to know the verdict), a stickler for propriety and nuclear families. 

Yet there was the dignity, a sort of composure they shared. There was the stiff, unyielding refusal to admit to the crimes they had in common. Slowly they had come to gain each other's respect: slowly she had begun to pretend he wasn't like the monsters of her past, slowly he had forgiven her for crimes she had yet to commit against his manhood. If they hadn't gotten accidentally drunk together, if she hadn't brought him to the halfway house, the room where her former roommate had hung herself from the rafters, they could have had something substantial. Probably. Possibly. Frollo smoothed his shirt, he still looked out of place in civilian clothing.

“Hello.”

“I heard your boy visited you.” Frollo shrugged.

“The hack he's seeing told him it was important to 'confront' me.”

“Poor baby.” She wasn't referring to Quasimodo. Frollo was gratefully aware of this. “For what it's worth, I can't even get a _supervised_ visit with my daughter.” Frollo shot a long, steady look at her cigarette. She wondered if he was trying to remember the taste.

“For what it's worth, I think you would be a wonderful mother.” Gothel smiled slow and dreamy. How did he always know the perfect thing to say?

“I do my best.”


End file.
